(LifeSiteNews) — The Lieutenant Governor of California is calling for former U.S. President Donald Trump to be barred from the state’s primary ballot for the 2024 presidential contest after the Colorado Supreme Court handed down its Tuesday night decision to disqualify Trump from the contest due to his alleged involvement in an “insurrection.”
On Wednesday, California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis wrote a letter calling on the California Secretary of State to explore following Colorado’s lead to disqualify Trump from the primary ballot.
“Based on the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling in Anderson v. Griswold… I urge you to explore every legal option to remove former President Donald Trump from California’s 2024 presidential primary ballot,” Kounalakis wrote in the letter addressed to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber.
California Lt. Gov. @EleniForCA writes to Secretary of State Shirley Weber to “explore every legal option to remove former President Donald Trump from California’s 2024 presidential primary ballot.”
Letter here: pic.twitter.com/HoGZdjLmNy
— Christopher Cadelago (@ccadelago) December 20, 2023
The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday evening ruled in a 4-3 decision that Trump is ineligible to run for president in 2024 and that his name should therefore not appear on state ballots in the primaries, LifeSiteNews reported.
The move has elicited strong pushback from Republicans, who argue the ruling is a partisan effort at election interference and gives the lie to Democrats’ rhetoric about protecting “democracy.” The decision has been stayed until early next month, and Trump’s campaign has vowed to appeal it to the U.S. Supreme Court.
READ: Colorado Supreme Court declares Trump ineligible for presidency, state’s primary
In the meantime, the major decision has created a judicial precedent for other states that would rather not see Trump have a shot at regaining the White House amid current U.S. President Joe Biden’s struggling poll numbers.
In the Wednesday letter, Lt. Gov. Kounalakis heavily referenced Colorado’s ruling, which relied on the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that bars any candidate from office who engaged in an “insurrection” after swearing an oath to uphold the Constitution.
Legal experts have blasted the Colorado Court’s decision as anti-democratic, but Kounalakis said the ruling was “about honoring the rule of law in our country in protecting the fundamental pillars of our democracy.”
“California must stand on the right side of history,” she said, hailing the “sanctity of our constitution and our democracy.”
It remains to be seen whether other states will follow California after the Colorado ruling, which Politico suggested “threatens profound disruption in 2024.”
After the Trump campaign’s promise to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Colorado decision is likely to reach the nation’s highest court, where it will face serious scrutiny.
Heritage Foundation election law expert and former FEC commissioner Hans von Spakovsky blasted the court’s reliance on the Fourteenth Amendment, an 1868 post-Civil War amendment, simply doesn’t apply in Trump’s case.
“First, Section 3 of the 14 Amendment applies only to individuals who were previously a ‘member of Congress,’ an ‘officer of the United States,’ or a state official. Individuals who are elected — such as the president and vice president — are not officers within the meaning of Section 3,” he wrote in an article published by the Heritage Foundation’s news arm The Daily Signal.
“Second, no federal court has convicted Trump of engaging in ‘insurrection or rebellion.’ In fact, the Senate acquitted Trump of that charge in his second impeachment,” Spakovsky said.
“This is a nakedly partisan, anti-democratic decision that ignores the law and prior precedent,” he argued.
In a post on X, legal analyst Jonathan Turley said the “Colorado Supreme Court has handed down the most anti-democratic opinion in decades,” “Yet, these justices barred voters from being [able] to vote for their preferred candidate in the name of democracy.”
“It is like burning down a house in the name of fire safety,” Turley said.